


Blood on the Palms

by VictoriaAGrey



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Cannibalism, Canon Divergence - Post-Mizumono, Case Fic, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Dark, First Time, M/M, Minor Character Death, Murder, Murder Family, Murder Husbands, Sexual Content, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-13 03:07:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4505328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VictoriaAGrey/pseuds/VictoriaAGrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Five-0 task force is brought to the scene of a crime that fits the profile of the Chesapeake Ripper, a serial killer known to have been on the run for the last two years. Knowing that the media and mass panic are going to descend on Hawaii once news of his reemergence hit the airwaves, Five-0 moves to solve the case before he can slip away again.</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>In which the Murder Family murders and Five-0 have to play by their rules if they hope to catch them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Carnage

**Author's Note:**

> The canon divergence present here is that Hannibal left Will bleeding on the floor and instead of killing Abigail, he left with her in tow to add salt to injury. Will recovered and ultimately found Hannibal and Abigail in Rome. Instead of wanting to kill him, he joined them.
> 
> They have been thrown into Five-0's timeline.

If there was a singular area where the SEALs excelled in their training, it was at instilling a sense of predictability in their soldiers. In any given situation, they could be counted on to act quickly and efficiently. This mentality bled into virtually every aspect of their warriors’ lives; from how they conducted themselves in their relationships all the way down to how they shopped for groceries. It was a code not everyone could live by, but those who chose to thrived under its influence. Over six years off of active duty and in the reserves, Steve still went through the same morning routine which had been drilled into him in the service. His one act of rebellion was that he often lazed around in bed for five minutes, stretching and enjoying the feel of his sleep warmed sheets before the itching sensation under his skin that told him to get off his ass and get moving became unbearable.

It was rare that he wasn’t able to do at least a portion of his waking ritual, but as he scrambled to clutch his cell phone on the bedside table in the predawn moonlight, he had a feeling that even brushing his teeth would be pushing it.

“McGarrett,” he rasped into the mouthpiece without first checking to see who called.

“I’m sorry to be ringing you at such an hour, but this is urgent,” Governor Denning apologized as he hurriedly continued, stress weighing down every word. “I need you in Waianae within the hour.”

“What happened?”

“Homicide. It’s – Steve, I don’t -”

Hearing the normally unflappable governor stutter was enough for Steve to shake off the remaining tendrils of sleep behind his eyes and sit up in bed, looking towards his closet as alarm bells chimed in the back of his skull.

“Governor?”

“Steve, this – this is bad. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve got seasoned officers throwing up outside. Max needed a moment to compose himself before he started examining the bodies. It’s going to turn into a goddamn mad house down here in a few hours. Whatever did this needs to be caught and sealed away from the public as soon as possible. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal,” he replied as he threw aside his bed covers, feeling both irked and relieved to hear Denning’s usual steely tone. “And sir, _whatever_ did this?”

“Monsters don’t only exist within our nightmares, Commander. I’ll see you and the rest of Five-0 within the hour.”

As Steve caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror, he thanked his lucky stars that another aspect of a SEAL’s predictability was the skill to adapt to any and all situations they were thrown into.

~~~

Steve was finishing pouring coffee into two thermoses when he heard the telltale turn of the front door’s handle. Smiling to himself as he pulled butter and creamer from the fridge, he braced himself for Hurricane Danny and what was sure to be a rant for the history books.

“I gotta tell you, Denning has some fucking nerve waking us all up at the ass crack of dawn; a time which sees even your crazy _testa_ still asleep before waking up to the smell of napalm in the morning. I’m running on three hours of sleep and irritation at your voice being the first thing I heard when I woke up. And why, for the love of god, are you putting butter into your coffee in front of me knowing that seeing such a sacrilege sickens me?”

“ _Testa_?”

“Yeah, you got problem with me speaking some Italian?”

“No, I just didn’t think your culture extended to anything beyond Hoboken.”

“ _Vaffanculo, Stefano_ _!_ ”

Unable to hold back his laughter, Steve let his head loll back as cheerful laughter bubbled up in his throat and filled the room. While rare to catch him on such an occasion, if you caught him early enough and before his morning workout, it was much easier to make him laugh in an uninhibited way. He briefly entertained the idea that maybe Danny knew this and that’s why he always came locked and loaded with rants, but he explained it away by saying it was his natural way to alleviate his frustration at being woken up at such an ungodly hour. That doesn’t mean Steve didn’t hope for the former though, especially now as he gets his first look at Danny and all he sees is a small smile and mirthful eyes.

“You wound me, Daniel.”

“You wound me by desecrating coffee like that.”

“It’s brain food,” he automatically retorted, already having had this argument. “I insist you try it sometime. Who knows what your brain looks like after years of your ties cutting off circulation to it.”

“That’s cute, Steven,” Danny said pointing at him before grabbing his thermos and putting creamer and sugar in it. “How long have you been saving that one up for?”

“I haven’t been. That was off the cuff. See, unlike you, I don’t need to rehearse my lines.”

“I don’t rehearse my lines. You just naturally bring out the best in me.”

Each grabbing their respective thermos, they made their way for the door. “You say the sweetest things to me. That’s why I love you.”

“You know why I love you? Because your control freak ways mean you’re going to drive us to the crime scene,” he informed him as he threw Steve the keys after he turned around from closing the door. “Which is a good thing this morning because I’d be more tempted to drive us off a cliff so I could get more sleep.”

“You picture us going out like Thelma and Louise?” Steve chuckled as he adjusted the seat and mirrors to his height before starting the Camero, savoring the vibrations the engine gave off before driving her down the driveway and onto the road.

“No,” he balked, with accompanying hand flails. “More like Bonnie and Clyde. Except we’d get off a few shots of our own.”

“As long as I get to be Clyde.”

“Oh, absolutely. I wouldn’t have it any other way. You swept me, poor innocent Bonnie, into your world of bullets and crime.”

“Bonnie was hardly innocent! She was a willing participant and a noted hybristophiliac.”

“You do get me all hot and bothered when you punch terrorists and kill bad guys.”

“Why do you think I do it all the time?”

Refocusing on the road, Steve was thankful when their chuckles didn’t dissolve into awkward silence. As of late, it too often seemed like their flirting ended in such a way. He couldn’t say why that was the case now, after years of flirting and it rarely turning uncomfortable. Both had been known to occasionally push the limits of what they said and did, but it seemed like lately all they were doing was pushing further and further into what the other could consider acceptable until they hit a wall and the other snapped. It was like they were playing some bizarre game of gay chicken and they could no longer tell who was winning. Unspoken rules were getting broken left and right. Suggestive touches and evocative words were no longer kept separate, but being used at the same time to further challenge the other, often with disastrous results. The last time Danny did it, he squeezed Steve’s thigh and said they could easily out dance the couple basically having sex on the dance floor. He may have been teasing, but Steve, apparently in no mood to be teased with such a suggestion, started a bar fight just so he had a way to channel his sexual frustration. His feeble excuse that he started it to apprehend the escaped convict at a nearby high-top was bought by no one, Danny being no exception.

One of these days, one of them was going to break and it was going to get messy; messy not only for work relations and their friendship, but Steve’s heart. After so many years of living with unrequited feelings for his best friend, he wasn’t sure what his heart would look like after the fallout. He considered pulling back from him for awhile, not hanging out with him so often or doing casual dinners, but he’d tried to before and something always drew him back. All he could do is sit back, wait for the storm to hit, and hope he could wade through the damage for salvageable parts afterwards.

“Alright, you didn’t give me any details when you called, so give me the nitty-gritty now,” Danny requested as he sipped his coffee.

“There’s nothing to tell. Denning called and said he needed Five-0 within the hour out at Waianae for what sounds like a multiple homicide. I called you right after I got off the phone with him.”

“You didn’t get any of the preliminary shit?”

“No time.”

“Has to be pretty bad if he’s calling us in now.”

Taking in the highway that was only now beginning to light up under the first traces of sunshine, Steve was inclined to agree. It was a workday for them and if Denning was calling them in now, unwilling to wait through the few hours before the official start of their day, there was something very, very bad waiting for them. In some distant part of his brain that stayed resolutely tired, he registered that he still wouldn’t be awake under normal circumstances.

“Think we should be worried?”

“I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “Denning didn’t sound like himself.”

“How so?”

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he sounded scared.”

Danny laughed humorlessly and turned towards Steve, as if seeking confirmation that what he said wasn’t true. Steve looked back at him with a solemn expression. “Denning? Scared? Are we talking about the same guy here?”

“He tried not to sound like it, but yeah, he sounded scared. At the very least deeply disturbed. Max is already there and even he needed a moment to collect himself before he started his examination.”

“But Max loves new and unusual crime scenes.”

“Well, apparently even he has limits. Denning also added the little detail that officers are throwing up all over the place. Hopefully not on any of the evidence.”

“Jesus,” Danny quietly intoned as he took another sip. “I almost don’t want to find out what’s waiting for us.”

A part of Steve wanted to let Danny know he felt the same way, but he felt oddly exposed at the thought of revealing that maybe, just maybe, he didn’t want to see something gruesome enough to elicit such terrible responses in everyone who saw it. He’d been doing better with talking about his feelings lately, but he felt uncomfortable showing even the barest threads of fear. Danny wouldn’t mock him for it, in fact, he’d probably welcome the knowledge that Steve dreaded the reveal as much as he did, but he couldn’t make his mouth move. Instead, he kept quiet and allowed the familiar silence between them to settle as he finished the drive.

Pulling up to the neighborhood’s gated entrance, Steve encountered a row of cop cars that now acted as an additional barrier to anyone trying to get in, especially the smattering of journalists and newscasters already setting up shop across the street.

“Names and qualifications,” the uniformed officer, Palakiko, according to his badge, ordered as Steve rolled down the window.

“Five-0,” he replied as he held out his badge and signaled to Danny’s. “I’m Commander Steve McGarrett and this is Detective Danny Williams.”

“Very good. Please hold, Commander.”

A swooping hand gesture behind him signaled for the gate to be opened by the officer now sitting sentry in the security station.

“Officer Palakiko, would you mind explaining to me why the blockade starts out here?”

The young officer ducked so he could face Steve through the window with an apologetic expression. Steve didn’t like the contained, but evident fear in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Commander, but it was ordered as an extra precaution against press leaks. The street Mr. ‘Akamu lived on has also been shut down and the surrounding houses evacuated.”

“What the fuck?” he heard Danny mumble under his breath next to him.

“That’s highly unusual,” he mentioned before something awful occurred to him. “This isn’t connected to a potential terrorist attack is it?”

“No, sir,” Officer Palakiko hurriedly corrects. “But they want to tightly contain the flow of information that the press gets. Don’t want to cause panic.”

Thanking the officer for the information, Steve drove through the opened gate, the cogs in his mind turning rapidly through the rolodex of crime scenes he’d been to. He couldn’t recall ever going to one where the security was so tightly controlled, unless it presented an imminent threat to the public. Quickly flashing his Five-0 badge to an officer at yet another barricade, he was finally able to drive down the street Mr. ‘Akamu lived on and park behind Chin’s motorcycle. Exiting the car in accidental synchronicity with Danny, they greeted Chin and Kono, both of whom were leaning against Kono’s compact car looking supremely irritated.

“Why aren’t you two already in there?”

“We were told we had to wait for you and Danny,” Chin informed him, sounding uncharacteristically sarcastic. The early wake up was apparently chaffing on his normally calm disposition as well. “Heads of the department have to escort their teams in.”

Kono, although evidently annoyed, looked a tad more understanding. “They mean business, boss. They’re restricting foot traffic in there as much as possible.”

Nodding in comprehension, Steve turned and led his team up to the property, holding his badge up the whole way so he wouldn’t continuously get stopped by well-to-do cops doing their job. The grounds, although not sprawling, were beach front and therefore meant he was most likely dealing with the murder of someone wealthy and high profile, but he doubted the latter. While nothing to scoff at, the house was obviously built in the sixties and had only undergone enough renovations to show it was well maintained. So, the resident was most likely rich, but not CEO-of-a-Fortune-500-company rich. Filing his observations away, he led the team to Denning who emerged from the house with an expression that screamed he would rather be in a warzone than where he was.

“Governor Denning,” Steve greeted, holding out his hand, which Denning shook.

“Commander. Where’s the rest of your team?”

“Cath is on special assignment with the Navy for a week. Grover’s on vacation.”

“I can’t do anything about Catherine, but I’m calling Grover in. He can finish his vacation after this mess is over.”

“Sir -” he interjected, wanting to stand up for Grover and his much deserved vacation with his family. He understood that this case was serious, but he couldn’t help thinking that everything happening in regards to this case was way over the top.

“No, McGarrett. Don’t start with me. I’ll call him in myself to absolve you of any blame, but I need all hands on deck for this.”

Biting his tongue, Steve acknowledged him with nothing more than a tilt of his head. He was good at taking orders, he’d made a career out of getting orders and following them to the letter, but he loathed when someone interfered with his team. The silence that followed was slowly starting to crystallize until Danny spoke up, popping the chilly bubble surrounding them.

“Well, now that we got that out of the way, would you mind explaining why half the Hawaiian police force is out here?”

Looking around the street and remembering how many officers were at the entrance of the community, it wasn’t much of an exaggeration to think that half the police force was here. They were crawling all over the roads, either looking for evidence, acting as security against unauthorized entry, or interviewing residents of the neighborhood for information on anything suspicious that may have occurred recently. The only place where they _weren’t_ was inside the house.

Denning turned to Danny with a stern expression. “Information on this case is to be tightly controlled. Until anything is confirmed, we need to keep as much from the public as possible.”

“You already have suspicions as to who the killer is,” Chin pensively said. Steve had caught that too, the “confirmed” rather than “found.” That word choice alone flipped his assumption that the _victim_ was potentially high profile; perhaps it was the _killer_.

“Yes,” Denning confirmed, sobering. “Before we go in, I have to state what the protocol is here and reiterate that while, yes, most of it is obvious, the following will be strictly enforced. Under no circumstances are you to speak with the press about any aspect of this case without first getting consent from me and PR. All materials pertaining to this case are to remain within government buildings and are not allowed to leave the premises. You are permitted to speak of the case only with officials cleared to have intimate knowledge of it. Daily updates will be given to me. Any deviation from protocol and you can and will be punished with termination from the task force. Do you understand?”

A resounding “yes” was given by all four of them in unison.

“Oh, and -” Denning paused, inelegantly gesturing towards the house. “If you need a moment, please feel free to take it. I promise no judgment will be passed on you.”

Without another word, Denning turned and led the way towards the house. Crossing the threshold onto the pristine white tile of the foyer, a dark energy filled Steve with dread. He didn’t subscribe to the notion that there were psychics and people who could read energies, he trusted only what he himself could see and touch, but when he got feelings like this, he listened to them. Maybe it was simple intuition, but whenever he got a feeling similar to this, his trepidation always proved to be justified. Only the steady presence of Danny at his side kept his heavy legs from faltering in their stride down the hallway.

Time slowed until it froze when Steve entered the furnitureless living room. The sight before him may have been easier to process if it came to him in segments, easy to absorb pieces that came together to form the whole puzzle, but that’s not what happened. No, the whole thing crashed into him in an unrelenting wave of information that immediately shut him down. His immobility couldn’t have lasted longer than a few seconds, but it cost him greatly. He was forced to stand there, unable to move in the face of pure carnage. Life in special ops for the Navy exposed him to some truly horrendous sights, but this, god he didn’t even know where to begin.

Blood was everywhere. The white of the tile floor was nearly unidentifiable beneath pools of dried blood and the white walls were painted obscenely in dripping arches of blood spatter. Decomposition perfumed the air with a delicately sweet scent that was effortlessly overpowered by pungent death. The sunrise spilling into the room seemed to mock the scene before him; the new sun bringing to light the horrors which had occurred in darkness and should have stayed there.

The bodies. Jesus, the three naked bodies restrained before him atop the stumps of palm trees were mutilated almost to the point of being unrecognizably male. It seemed every sharp object on the property had been gathered here and then mercilessly shoved into them. He could see pens, knives, an ax, letter openers, saws, even tiny tie pins sticking out of their corpses. The three javelins sticking out of the center man’s body almost didn’t look so bad when compared to the whole picture.

“What’s missing?” Danny’s flat, toneless voice asked beside him. Max, who was standing in the corner taking notes on his tablet next to Denning, didn’t appear to hear him.

“MAX!”

Danny’s angry roar made everyone flinch, the silent vigil they had been holding over the victims shattering into a million indiscernible shards. Startled, Max did look up at Danny and Steve instantly felt bad for him. While he did have a fondness for abnormal crime scenes, this wasn’t just abnormal; this was brutality brought into fruition with the ruthless hands of someone who had no regard for human life. He had shut a part of himself down, much like Steve had, in order to do his job. Danny had brought him back to the reality he wanted to catalogue, but not see.

“I’m sorry, Max,” Danny breathlessly apologized, as if he were shocked by his own outburst. He slowly walked towards Max and set a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted, Detective,” Max replied, pulling his lips into what he had probably intended to be an understanding smile instead of grimace.

“What’s missing?”

Pointing to the body furthest from him, he looked down at his tablet. “Eyes were ruptured within the ocular cavity. Heart and liver missing.” Then signaling to the man in the middle. “Lips and tongue removed. Teeth broken. Lungs missing.” Finally, he tipped his stylus towards the body closest to him. “Ears cut off. Stomach and kidneys missing.”

Curiosity flowed through Steve when Danny drooped his head, listening to Max with his eyes closed. He somehow _knew_ the victims would be missing body parts and was then devastated to hear his suspicions confirmed. Before he could ask anything, Danny patted Max on the shoulder and started walking back towards him with steel in his eyes.

“Kono, can you drive Steve back,” Danny very deliberately said as a statement and not a question.

“Yeah, sure,” she hollowly responded. Steve could hear shock in her as well.

Without looking at him or saying another word, Danny reached into Steve’s front pocket, yanked his keys out, and walked straight out the front door. Steve calling his name had no effect. Rounding on Max, he pointed in the direction of the door.

“Do you know what that was all about?”

“I believe he knows who our killer is.”

“He knows who our killer is?” Chin asked with the tough voice of a cop waiting to spring into action. “Do you?”

“The mutilation of the bodies mimicking Wound Man in Ketham’s _Fasciculus Medicinae_ is the signature of the Chesapeake Ripper.”

“Who’s the Chesapeake Ripper?”

“Hannibal Lecter, who is widely regarded as the most prolific serial killer alive.”

Feeling the urgent need to get as far away from everyone as he could, Steve walked out onto the open _lanai_ and took in a deep breath.


	2. Consult

Gathering evidence at the scene seemed to take an exorbitant amount of time when all Steve wanted to do was get out of there and find Danny. With the limited complement of crime scene investigators, bagging and tagging the major pieces of evidence took closer to three hours rather than the usual hour or so and the interviews with neighbors proved to be fruitless. No one saw or heard anything suspicious if they were all to be believed. Everything about the murders bothered Steve, grating on him like an out of tune guitar. For such a heinous over the top crime, it was remarkably clean and, in its own way, efficient. Normally murders like this left a multitude of clues behind for him and his team to parse out, but aside from the obvious signature of the Chesapeake Ripper, there was nothing.

“Not even a hair left behind,” Kono disgustedly exclaimed as they made their way back to the palace with what evidence they had. “How did he do all that and leave _nele_?”

“I don’t know,” Steve automatically responded. He sat in the passenger’s seat, lightly drumming his fingers inside the handle on the door as he absentmindedly watched Chin’s motorcycle ahead of them. It was taking a great amount of effort to not jump out of the car and run the last mile or two back to HQ.

“Danny knew it was Lecter.”

Shifting his weight to his right side, Steve swallowed. “Yeah, he did.”

“Do you know how?”

“No. He’s never mentioned him.”

“I don’t like this. Serial killer on the run shows up in a high profile murder after two years of successfully staying off everyone’s radar? Something’s going on and it’s gotta be bad.”

Silently agreeing with a nod, Steve stared out the window and mulled over what little they had so far, which was at once both a lot and nothing at all. What he needed was data to inform him of what exactly he was looking at; data which Danny somehow had. The rippling worry he had about Danny’s reaction was spilling over to the surface of his seemingly calm exterior, making his fingers twitch and his jaw clinch. His distress was high enough that let Kono drive without their usual quibbling, him knowing he was in no real shape to drive when he was too consumed with thoughts of Danny and the prospect of having to hunt down a prolific serial killer who was clearly proficient at covering his trail.

When Kono parked next to Chin, the three of them quickly fell into stride together as they made their way towards and into the palace. At times like these, it hit Steve how odd it was that people were milling about around him as if today were a normal day when it was anything but. Ascending the flight of stairs leading to HQ, Steve started to feel more in his element, in control with a job to do so the people in this building could continue going about having normal days.

“I’ve already established the link, just have him connect when he comes in. Thank you,” Danny said as Steve opened the glass door.

“Established a link with who?”

“Jack Crawford, head of the behavioral analysis unit at the FBI.”

There was a cool intensity about Danny as he laid folders out on the tech-table where each of them normally stood, Steve feeling inordinately pleased when Danny put a folder next to his own, placing Steve next to himself. As Steve picked up the heavy folder, he felt his anxiety start to wane. The irony of a hothead like Danny calming him was not lost on him.

“Going a little old school here, Danny.”

“This stuff you need to hold to believe,” he remarked as he looked at Chin. “Plus, I didn’t feel like spending all day trying to figure out how to transfer all this shit to the pads.”

A swell of chuckles met Danny’s confession as they settled into their positions at the table and began flipping through their respective folders. Steve was more than a little appalled by how much red he saw on his brief flip through.

“What am I looking at Danny?”

“Everything I have on Hannibal Lecter.”

“Everything _you_ have? How do you have it in the first place?” Steve asked as he looked to his friend at his side.

“I was called in as a consult when Lecter booked it after exposing himself for what he is. You’re looking at the case that was the final straw on my marriage’s back.”

The glib way Danny said it didn’t make it any easier to digest. Everyone briefly froze in a strangely reverential way before acting as if the admission wasn’t as big a deal as it was. Kono was the first to speak again.

“Why were you called in as a consultant?”

“Like we here at Five-0, I had a freakishly high solve rate in homicide when I was in Jersey. When the Lecter case hit a dead end, I was contacted by the FBI to look at it in the hopes of turning up anyway of locating and convicting him.”

“And what did you find?”

“Long story short: follow Will Graham.”

Chin shared a significant look with Steve and Kono before setting his folder back on the table. “I’m game for the long story.”

“I figured,” Danny replied understandingly before he set his folder down as well. “First, let me say it is truly remarkable that you didn’t at least recognize the name. Over on the mainland, it’s enough to strike fear into the hearts of 400 pound body builders and PTA moms alike. Maybe there really is some truth to that whole “island ignorance” thing. Chin, you disappoint me.”

“Apologies, Danny. If I buy you a few Longboards -”

“- I promise to forgive you, unless it is the McGarrett Method of buying me Longboards, then I’ll feed you to the sharks.”

“Hey, I paid last time!”

“Because I grabbed your wallet out of the truck,” Danny teased with a smile that was close to normal as he nudged Steve with his elbow. “You were trying to scam Kono into paying before I got it out of its hiding place in the glovebox.”

“He’s right, you know.”

Steve just shook his head, smiling at them ganging up on him about what he thought of as an endearing personality quirk. Well, not so much endearing as entertaining. It was always a crapshoot as to whether or not he would pay, so they brought their own money every time just in case. He liked moments like this, when there was a sense of unity and amusement in the group. Steve also knew this case was bleak and they needed all the reprieves they could get from it, so he let them laugh until it naturally died out.

“Alright, alright, time to get down to it,” Danny said as he waved his hands in what Steve assumed was an attention getting gesture to get them focused on him again. “But seriously, this case was huge; it was fucking everywhere. A high society psychiatrist revealed to be a sadistic cannibalistic serial killer? To say people panicked is an understatement.”

In impotent observation, he watched Kono and Chin pale to the one word which caused his own heartbeat to stumble. “He’s a cannibal?”

“Yeah. It’s why I asked Max what organs were missing. A part of his signature is torturing his victims before removing the organs he wants to eat while they’re still alive. It was also later discovered that when he killed in sounders as the Chesapeake Ripper he would throw dinner parties for his high society friends so he could feed them his victims. He thought it was funny.”

“Warped sense of humor.”

“You want warped, Kono, try he was also known to make cannibalism jokes.”

“Sounds like a lovely guy,” Chin sarcastically deadpanned.

“By all accounts, he was. His friends and associates adored him until they found out what he was. He was highly respected by the psychiatric community for his work on social exclusion. It was how he went without suspicion for so long; he hid in plain sight.”

“I don’t understand,” Steve remarked as he shook his head, as if the movement would help him sort out his thoughts. “If he was so good at covering his tracks and hiding from suspicion, how did he get caught?”

“A criminal profiler with the FBI named Will Graham was assigned to catch Garret Jacob Hobbs aka the Minnesota Shrike; another cannibal but that sick fuck killed teenage girls who looked like his daughter Abigail. Lecter was brought in to make sure Will found his way back to himself after catching him. Instead of helping him, Lecter manipulated him and his empathy disorder and framed him for the homicide of Abigail Hobbs and the Copycat Killer murders, which were later revealed to be Lecter's as well. Graham figured it out and named him as the Chesapeake Ripper.”

Chin looked confusedly at Danny. “Why wasn’t Lecter arrested then?”

“Because Graham had encephalitis and the case being built against him was that he committed the crimes in states of unconsciousness caused by it. Not to mention the various parts of the Copycat victims found in fishing lures he made and the fact that he threw up Abigail Hobbs’ ear.”

“Do I even want to know how her ear got in there?” Kono asked with a look which expressed that she really didn’t know if she wanted the answer.

“Lecter induced a seizure and shoved it down his throat.”

“Sounds like he thought of every eventuality,” Steve intoned in such a way that made him feel uncomfortable upon hearing it, like he was in awe of Lecter’s prowess. “How did Graham get released?”

“The Ripper ripped again. Let go of some loose ends which would prove Graham innocent.”

“Woah, hold up there, bruh,” Kono laughed mirthlessly in disbelief. “Are you saying he framed Graham and then made sure he got acquitted? That makes no sense.”

“It does if he’s in love with him.”

A brain-freezing silence fell over the table as they all looked at Danny as if he were insane, or cracking a badly timed joke he needed to take back immediately. His matter-of-fact expression made the cold hard truth real. Steve pinched the bridge of his nose in a feeble attempt to stave off what he sure was going to be the headache of a lifetime. This case was already too twisted and they hadn’t even covered the current murders.

“He’s in love with him so he frames him and acquits him?”

“No great reward without great risk. Graham’s empathy disorder makes him unique in that he’s the only person who could ever truly understand Lecter. Lecter wanted Graham to see him and love not just the person the public saw, but the devil inside. If he didn’t force Graham to see it, he never would have.”

“Did his plan work?”

“Yes and no. Graham saw him for what he was and as a result attempted to have him killed by a sympathetic orderly at the institution he was kept in during his trial. When he was released, Lecter sent a patient he had effectively weaponized after Graham. It all went downhill from there. Graham’s plan with Crawford to catch Lecter backfired because it was discovered by IA and deemed entrapment. Crawford, believing it was the only option left to him, went to kill him but he didn’t know Graham called ahead to warn Lecter because, while he was willing to see him rot away in a mental institution, he wasn’t willing to see him dead. Crawford, Graham, Lecter, and Lecter’s girlfriend Alana Bloom all ended up in his house that night. Lecter pushed Bloom out of his second story window, Crawford was critically wounded by a stab wound to the neck, and he left Graham bleeding out from a gash to his abdomen on the kitchen floor.”

Kono’s expression of sympathy and disquiet resonated with Steve as he watched her try to formulate her thoughts. “And they all made it out alive?”

“Crawford almost didn’t make it. He lost a lot of blood and passed out at some point. Bloom’s left hip broke and several vertebrae were fractured. Graham’s injury proved to be surgical in its precision. Lecter wanted him alive.”

“You said the key to this was following Will Graham. Follow him where?”

“After he recovered, he disappeared. One of the last things he did was tell Crawford that the reason he called Lecter to warn him was because he wanted to run away with him.”

“Why would he do that?”

As Danny turned to answer Chin, the black screen which was on the center TV flashed blue with an incoming face-to-face call. Tapping the receiver on the tech-table, Danny opened up the channel to reveal a very distinguished man at the head of a conference table flanked by two men on his right and a woman on his left. Steve moved in closer to Danny and Chin and Kono stood on each of their sides.

“Detective Williams. I’m joined by Jimmy Price, Brian Zeller, and Dr. Alana Bloom. It is good to see you again.”

“Likewise, Special Agent Crawford. I’m here with Commander Steve McGarrett, Lieutenant Chin Ho Kelly, and Officer Kono Kalakaua.”

“Yes, I’ve heard of the Five-0 task force. Are you confirming that you’re on a path to capture Hannibal and Will?”

Steve was intrigued by the all business approach Crawford seemed to favor, which clashed with him referring to Lecter and Graham by their first names. Perhaps it was a sign of the threads of how personal the nature of his relationship with them was.

“All we can confirm right now is that we have a triple murder that fits the signature of the Chesapeake Ripper.”

“Tortured with organs surgically removed while they were alive or shortly after death? About 8,000 sharp objects sticking out of the bodies?” the man named Jimmy Price asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s our boy.”

“Or our boy’s boy.”

Price and Brian Zeller’s snickering drew a long-suffering look from Crawford and unsure amusement from Five-0. Steve felt it was inappropriate to laugh, but their delivery was somehow outrageous enough to make him want to.

“Is there something funny here?” he asked in a way that didn’t sound nearly as stern as he wanted it to.

“Besides the fact that the profiler who was supposed to catch the murderer ran away with said murderer and became his apprentice? No, not really.”

Apparently his sense of humor took a turn for the black recently because Steve did laugh at Price’s quip. Maybe it was the culmination of how crazy this case was already, but he welcomed the dark humor as he heard his team chuckle beside him.

“So you do believe Graham disappeared to be with Lecter?” Danny asked once his voice wouldn’t carry too much amusement.

“It is my and Dr. Bloom’s belief, yes.”

“Dr. Bloom, what led you to that conclusion?”

“In the weeks, preceding Hannibal’s attempt to kill me and Jack, the relationship between Will and Hannibal became increasingly intense. I expressed concern over them seeing each other at all, nevertheless in therapy sessions and privately. They became so tangled in each other’s psyche it became difficult to determine who was absorbing more of the other’s personality.”

“I’m sorry I have to ask this, Dr. Bloom, but do you feel Lecter was having an affair with Graham?” Chin asked in the reassuring, gentle tone he used with wronged spouses to get information.

“If Hannibal was having an affair, I was the other person, not Will. I’m not entirely sure if it was sexual, but emotionally and mentally he was taken. It’s likely he’s been in love with Will for a long time. That became evident to me when he pushed me out of his bedroom window and took Will’s coat off of me when he left us all to die, with the notable exception of Will. He wanted him to live.”

The bitterness in her voice piqued Steve’s attention. It didn’t sound like the bitterness of a cheated lover, but of someone who saw everything wrong when they thought they had it right. There was also her repeatedly bringing up that Lecter was the one to try to kill her. Again, it didn’t seem like anger, but like she was convincing everyone of something. Almost as if she didn’t full believe herself and what she was saying. He couldn’t outright accuse her of lying until he had evidence to say she was, but her words stuck with him.

“I always thought they should have just fucked it out,” Zeller blithely said.

“Maybe that’s why Lecter killed all those people after they met. Sexual frustration expressed through murderous art. He should’ve just listened to Guns ‘N Roses.”

“What if that’s why there’s been no kills connected to him the past few years? They’ve literally been fucking out their murderous desires.”

“Does that mean the latest murders are because Will’s not putting out anymore?”

“He’s put Hannibal in the dog house!”

“He always did have a thing for dogs,” Price exclaimed through his laughter.

Price and Zeller spun themselves around in their chairs to hide themselves as they laughed with renew vigor each time they looked at each other. Crawford had a constipated look like he wanted to yell but feared it would come out as laughter instead. Bloom turned her head and covered her mouth. Five-0 laughed outright even not knowing what they meant about Will’s apparent affection for dogs.

“Case closed, we got our motive,” Kono smiled as she turned to face the rest of her team. “We can go home, guys.”

“Oh, good. I was hoping to catch Judge Judy reruns this afternoon. We should keep these guys and their top notch detective skills around. Care to hire them Steven?”

“Absolutely. You two ready for a move to Oahu?”

“Only if Brian promises to buy me a drink that comes in a coconut.”

“Then pack your bags, Jimmy. We’re going to the big lights and tsunami sirens of Oahu.”

“Not so fast you two,” Crawford interrupted, quelling the good humor back to a more manageable level. “Let’s find Hannibal first. Do you have the names of the victims? What the common link between them is? What would draw Hannibal to them?”

“We just got back from the scene and all I can tell you definitively right now is that the owner of the house, a Mr. Joseph ‘Akamu, was among those dead,” Steve informed him. “‘Akamu is the only one we are able to positively identify so far. But we did retrieve his cellphone. Chin, would you mind uploading that data now?”

“Sure,” he replied as he reached into the evidence box they brought up with them, pulling ‘Akamu’s cell out and placing it on the tech-table for upload.

“What I would do to get my hands on that,” Price lovingly said as he watched Chin work through the screen.

“I’m not even going for that one,” Zeller told him as he shook his head in mock disappointment. “Too easy.”

“Alright, our final communication is an email two days ago. It reads: 

 

“ _Ready to talk at previous location._

_Ensure you’re not followed._

_Other two will show._

_‘Akamu_

 

 “The email address belongs to one Fredericka Lounds.”

The resulting sighs and frustrated looks he got from those on the conference call when they heard the name of who ‘Akamu was going to meet didn’t inspire much optimism in Steve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This seemed to get some positive feedback so I'm going to go ahead and finish this story out.
> 
> Thank you to anyone who kudosed and/or wrote positive feedback <3

**Author's Note:**

> Yay or nay? Let me know in the comments here or on my Tumblr, [mycroft-silently-judges-you](http://mycroft-silently-judges-you.tumblr.com)!
> 
> If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!


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